Stream It or Skip It?

The existence of Troll 2 is wholly logical in the age of streaming algorithms, being a sequel to 2022’s Netflix smash Troll, a cheeseball Norwegian CGI-slop quasi-kaiju adventure rooted in Scandinavian mythology that became the streamer’s biggest non-English-language hit. And so the creative core returns – aptly named director Roar Uthaug (2018’s Tomb Raider), writer Espen Aukan and stars Ine Marie Wilmann, Kim S. Falck-Jørgensen and Mads Sjøgård Pettersen, the cohort collectively aiding in the manifestation of the title, since we don’t get just one giant ugly digital troll this time, but TWO of them! That doesn’t guarantee that the movie is one better than the first, though.

TROLL 2: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT? 

The Gist: Troll 2 opens with a flashback to 30 years ago that probably doesn’t need to be here. Look ma! I just cut six minutes off the run time! It’s a little warm fuzzy from the childhood of Nora Tidemann (Wilmann), reminding us that she’s a troll expert just like her crazy father, who died in the first movie, and her mother, who hums a little troll tune to her at bedtime and then coughs three times, which is Movie Code for She’s Gonna Die Soon. And so she did. In the present day, Nora lives in the aftermath of Troll, which we don’t really remember in much detail because it didn’t compel us to, but it had something to do with how a giant ancient mythological-or-so-they-thought giant towering troll made out of rocks and dirt emerged from the forest and tried to destroy everything until she and some military guys killed it with UV lights. 

Now, Nora lives in isolation in a cabin in the middle of a Norwegian snowdrift near some mountains – a cabin filled with article clippings and such outlining how she quit the Troll Commission and other stuff that any sane person wouldn’t use as interior decor, unless that sane person is in a movie that needs to convey this information to its audience. Her old pal Andreas (Falck-Jørgensen) knocks on her door and brings her to a secret gub’ment facility where they’re keeping a troll, standing there comatose for reasons best explained as the sequel needs a plot. Then Nora sneaks up the scaffold and stands near its face with her magic troll sensitivity (or whatever; it’s a FEELING, kinda like Spidey Sense or the Force maybe?) and wakes it up. Whoops! Stompy stompy smashy smashy, now who’s going to stoppy-stop it? 

While the troll drops by a ski resort to rip the lid off a nightclub and toss douchebros into his maw like popcorn, Nora and her old soldierboy pal Kris (Pettersen) assemble a squad to pursue the troll in helicopters armed with massive UV lights. Nora’s a hippie about the situation, though, believing the trolls to be intelligent, where everyone else thinks they’re mindless animals. Their adventure brings them to a cave where another troll lives, a friendly troll that Nora can sorta communicate with, except he’s not as big and scary and murdery as the other troll, so he’s outclassed in a one-v-one fight. Then their adventure brings them to a different cave, where the OG troll slayer St. Olaf is buried, so we get a cheap and half-assed The Last Crusade-ish scene before the big crazy final kerfuff, where our human protags launch holy-water grenades at the evil troll. Neat! Now, is this all as fun in execution as it is on paper? Not in the slightest!

What Movies Will It Remind You Of? Do not confuse Troll 2 (2025) with Troll 2 (1990), which is far worse than the newer movie, and therefore far more entertaining. Oh, and King Kong could whup a troll until it cried for its mama. So could Godzilla. Or Mothra, Minya Godzilla or your mom. These trolls suck, is what I’m saying.

Performance Worth Watching: This cast is given not a single got danged interesting thing to do, but Wilmann sorta bridges the tonal gap between earnestness and camp that the movie seems somewhat interested in cultivating, perhaps. 

Sex And Skin: The trolls are totes nakies, but with like, pubic vines hanging low over where their junk would presumably be. These guys give new meaning to the word “manscaping,” right?

Our Take: Troll 2 seems to have forgotten that giant-beast-go-smash movies are supposed to be fun, not laborious slogs populated with deadass characters half-heartedly chasing zero-personality monsters. The new CG King Kong and Godzilla at least have some panache and an inkling of an inner life, inspiring some nifty action figures; these trolls are Dollar Tree knockoff kaiju, cheap- and ugly-looking slabs of grey that never once convince us they’re more than ones and zeroes churning dutifully through a hard drive while their similarly empty human co-stars stand slack-jawed in reaction shots or in front of obvious green screens. We might not care about the lack of convincing imagery if these spacefillers ever did anything interesting. 

The plot, which could be summed up in about nine words, feints toward Norway’s violent conversion to Christianity at the hands of the real King Olaf – it at the very least depicts the most Norwegian church destruction since Lords of Chaos – which might be juicy pulp for the text/subtext if the movie was compelled to be anything more than an icon in a slot in the Netflix Top 10 for a week. But it’s not. It’s a dreary snooze featuring deadly-lame one-liner-laden dialogue (some of it depressingly self-aware commentary on movie sequels, sigh) and wet-fart action sequences that lack oomph because Uthaug fails to develop any dramatic tension as the story builds to the inevitable double-troll heavyweight bout. There’s no urgency or momentum, just a dull plodding from one dreary set piece to the next, the characters dragged along by a story that’s never interested in cultivating even baseline emotional investment. The trolls here are made of earth and stone, and fittingly, the movie they’re in has brains made of pea gravel. 

Our Call: Troll 2 is even more tedious and underwhelming than its mediocre predecessor. SKIP IT. 

John Serba is a freelance film critic from Grand Rapids, Michigan. Werner Herzog hugged him once.